Soziale Systeme 8 (2002), Heft 2, S.

294-306 © Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart

Dirk Baecker

Lenin’s Void: Towards a Kenogrammar of Management

Zusammenfassung: Es gibt keine allgemein akzeptierte Soziologie des Managements.

Der kognitive Fokus der Soziologie tut sich schwer mit den volitiven Aspekten des
Managements. Der Aufsatz stellt einen Versuch vor, Management als einen evolu-
tionären Mechanismus zu verstehen, der kognitive und volitive Aspekte miteinander
integriert. Der Aufsatz führt die allgemeine Idee einer Kenogrammatik ein, mit deren
Hilfe die Leere beschrieben werden kann, die von einem Management bearbeitet
wird, das einen Zweck einführt. Es wird ein Modell vorgestellt, das das Management
der russischen Revolution durch Lenin als eine »strategy of access« (Philip Selznick)
beschreibt. Der Bolschewismus verwandelt Parteimitglieder in Parteiagenten, die sich
darum bemühen, Stellen in verschiedenen relevanten Organisationen zu besetzen und
in ihrem Vorgehen sowohl von einer passenden »Theorie« als auch von einer den All-
tag der Revolution definierenden »Praxis« unterstützt werden.

I. Introduction

There is no self-evident sociology of management. The cognitive focus of soci-

ology seems to be at odds with the volitive aspects of management. The paper
proposes to consider a possible approach, which consists in viewing manage-
ment as the evolutionary mechanism of a social system, thus integrating voli-
tion with cognition. Evolution does not necessarily change the system. It may
as well maintain it with respect to a changing environment. That is, the system
changes anyhow. The paper looks into some possible notions informing such a
view (II, III, IV), models it with respect to the case of the management of the
Russian revolution in 1917 (V), and offers a conclusion (VI). The paper is the
sketch of a possible »kenogrammar« of management, not its elaboration. It
proposes to consider emptiness, or void, as the necessary correlate of manage-
ment action. Any purpose, considered by management action, consists in see-
ing nothing where something will be, be it a profit, a technological innovation,
a network, or, indeed, a revolution. We speak of a kenogrammar (Günther /
von Foerster 1973) in order to emphasize that there is no emptiness, or void,
which is not surrounded, or accompanied, by determinateness.
Lenin’s Void: Towards a Kenogrammar of Management 295

II. Structure and Performance, System and Purpose

There is a certain tension between sociological thinking and management

thinking. Whereas sociological thinking tends to think in terms of structure
(Parsons 1937; White 1992), management thinking tends to think in terms of
performance (Gutenberg 1951; Drucker 1973).Yet it should be possible to rec-
oncile these two traditions since the reference of a structure is the solution of
the problem how to link yet unspecified elements or events, whereas the ref-
erence of a performance is the measure of that very solution.
That is not to say that sociology is without any measure. Indeed there are
plenty of ways how to measure a correlation of elements or events. Yet man-
agement not just measures, but measures with respect to a responsibility
which is the responsibility towards an organization or, vicariously, towards a
career. Again, sociology has its perspective on responsibility, too. Indeed, its
measures tend to be taken with respect to the overall behavior of a group or
society. Yet management, if anything, tends to be more restrictive in its
allowances for a gap between the measures, on one hand, and the phenomena
measured, on the other. Structures, that is, tend to be invented as the observer
sees fit. Performances are linked back to the phenomena, which carry them on,
or don’t.
There are two questions we may ask. One is, whether management is a possi-
ble object of sociological thinking, taking into account that it rarely is. The
other one is, whether sociology, learning from its object, could become more
restrictive in measuring the structures of the social.
Systems may be a possible perspective of how to analyze the structure of man-
agement while reintroducing structure into sociology. The terms to frame
structure and performance, then, are system and purpose: Any structure is
interpreted as the structure of a system, taking part, or not, in the production
and reproduction of the system. The advantage of a systems reframing of the
notion of structure is that structures tend to be interchangeable, even if every
one of them is necessary, with respect to the autopoiesis of a system (Matu-
rana / Varela 1980). As to performance, the systems perspective introduces the
notion of purpose (Rosenblueth / Wiener / Bigelow 1943). Purpose both mea-
sures and directs performance. Indeed, it directs it by measuring it.
We may then say that purpose is the structure of performance if that perfor-
mance is able to direct and measure itself at all.
That notion includes the possibility that the performance is the purpose of the
performance.
Management, then, is performance only insofar as it controls, that is directs
and measures itself in terms of the purpose of the performance (Vickers 1967).
Sociology of management would have to look into the systems reference of
such a performance and into the sources of possible purpose.
296 Dirk Baecker

There is a drawback to such a procedure. If we link purpose back to system we

have to accept the notion that »system« means black box. Even if we succeed
in giving a model of system, it will be the model of our relationship with that
system. We should be aware of the fact that the better we understand the
model the less we understand the system and ourselves, the observer of the
system (Glanville 1982).
That is why cybernetics proposes to talk of control, not of understanding.
Cybernetics proposes to restrict analysis to »operational research« (Ashby
1958), which consists

– in looking at what happens, not at why it happens,

– in collecting only the information necessary for the job at hand,
– and in trying to solve only the problems of today since the system will
change anyway.

The advantage is that we get an awareness of what cybernetics is doing. Soci-

ology may be understood as the epistemology of cybernetics with respect to
the management of a system. Sociology watches cybernetics controlling the
indeterminateness of a system (Luhmann 1996, 51-52; Luhmann 1997). It
becomes a measure of management’s performance with respect to the struc-
tures of the social.

III. Evolution

Purpose, to be sure, is not to be seen in terms of causality. There is no assump-

tion here that the purpose is the cause of the effects to be produced. Aris-
totelian teleology is replaced by cybernetic teleology talking of feedback
instead of cause and effect. The teleology assumed consists in a logic linking
back the observed behavior to systems states (»teloi«) either to be realized or
to be avoided (Rosenblueth / Wiener / Bigelow 1943). The control of deviations
by either positive or negative feedback creates the »morphogenesis« of the
system (Maruyama 1963). Positive feedback, or amplification of deviations,
maintains the system by changing it; negative feedback, or correction of devia-
tions, changes the system by maintaining it.
In order not to fall back on a causal perspective, even when not denying that
there are a lot of causes and effects traveling back and forth between systems
and their environments, we introduce an evolutionary perspective. Evolution
here means that we restrict ourselves to the observation of variations, selec-
tions, and retention and assume a systemic perspective linking these three
»mechanisms« to each other (Campbell 1969). It should be noted, however,
that post-neo-darwinistic evolution theory avoids talking of systems since
there is no self-evident way to link these three mechanisms to each other
Lenin’s Void: Towards a Kenogrammar of Management 297

(Kauffman 1993). Instead it talks of »complexity«, yet assumes a sharp distinc-

tion between »natural selection«, on one hand, and »self-organization« on the
other, only to assume that this very distinction is the precondition for a system
to be able to evolve, and for an observer to be able to watch it.
In drawing on evolution theory we solve the problem of keeping our distance
towards causality, yet have to accept in exchange a certain blurring of the
notion of system by accepting complexity. We compensate for such a blurring
of the primary distinction of systems theory by taking up the notion of »form«,
as proposed by G. Spencer Brown (1969). Any determinacy, or mark, here
depends on the operation of a distinction creating as its »other side« an
unmarked state and (re-)producing the indeterminateness of the initial condi-
tion at the very moment of an observation of the form of the distinction con-
sisting of its two sides taken together.
Note that the initial condition is already the result of an observation that rein-
troduces complexity where a distinction has already been drawn. We will see,
as this is indeed our perspective on management, that seeing a void triggers a
reintroduction that favors yet another distinction instead of being paralyzed by
complexity.
Note that we are accepting a certain complexity in terms of terms in order not
to be overwhelmed by complexity in terms of facts. We are following G.
Spencer Brown’s recipe to abandon existence to truth, truth to indication, indi-
cation to form, and form to void (Spencer Brown 1969, 101).
We are as cautious as possible. We assume management not to be restricted to
just one evolutionary mechanism. It may play out its regime on the levels of all
three evolutionary mechanisms. Management may thus present an organiza-
tion

– with ever new variations to look at itself and its environment,

– with selections of useful versus useless variations,
– and with retentions of selected variations with respect to possibilities of
stabilizing the system.

Management thus may play the role of evolution disguised as planning. This
may be the only way to introduce »requisite variety« (Ashby 1958) into a sys-
tem operating as distinct from evolutionary, even turbulent environments
(Emery / Trist 1965). Yet, this assumes a certain all-pervasiveness of manage-
ment that, while corresponding to a certain self-image of management,
emphasizes as well the inner conflicts of management. Management has
either to contradict itself, playing out selection against variation, and vice
versa, or to short-circuit evolution by feeding retention back into variation.
Luhmann (1997, 494) is assuming such a short-circuit on the level of the over-
all society, thereby reintroducing the distinction between »natural selection«
and »self-organization« into the system.
298 Dirk Baecker

IV. Volition

We have systems, purpose, and evolution to frame performance and structure.

Purpose translates performance into structure, thus linking evolution back to
systems if we allow for failing purpose and non-purposeful behavior as well.
Let systems be defined as the operation solving the problem of the reproduc-
tion of a system. That means, we introduce the notion of system in order to
introduce unpredictability and unreliability with respect to systems operations
being the still uncertain remedy to both (von Foerster 1987; Luhmann1996;
Baecker 2002a). Note that unpredictability and unreliability are introduced by
the systems being recursive entities, that is by the systems being systems,
operating on their own operands.
Let evolution be defined as the elaboration of the knowledge that we don’t
know what happens yet watch correlation that somehow is more than chance.
We assume variation, selection, and retention to cooperate, yet we know the
very distinction between variation and selection and between selection and
retention to be the blind spots of evolution theory (Luhmann 1997, 426).
We may thus accept performance as a different word for systems operations
solving the systems problems, and structure as a different word for the link
between the solution and the problem.
Management, then, may be understood as the performance of the form of the
purpose, always insisting on the purpose while knowing that the distinction of
the purpose is and remains a selective one. This knowledge attaches manage-
ment to all three mechanisms of evolution, since the selection may be the
selection of a variation, the selection of a selection, or the selection of reten-
tion. The important feature is that any of these selections gets performed, that
is, gets done and may be observed by others. It is the performance that defines
operations being selected and next operations being possible.
It seems to follow from these considerations that management, as the perfor-
mance of a form, is working both marked states and unmarked states, includ-
ing the distinction between them. The attractiveness of the idea of purpose
may not lie in what it describes as the state aimed at but in the states to be
avoided in more or less close proximity to that state. Looking at what you want
you begin to observe the relevant part of the world, never knowing for sure, to
be sure, what exactly is the relevant part, thus keeping an eye on the horizon
as well.
It should be evident that any performance receives its own guidance through
the ability to link marked states (purposes) and unmarked states (environ-
ment) and to insist, as long as it seems to fit, on the very distinction carrying
that link.
Yet purpose does not only entertain a link to environment, which we may call
the cognitive aspect of management. Any purpose assumes as well a link
Lenin’s Void: Towards a Kenogrammar of Management 299

between a state not yet realized (including states to be maintained) and a dif-
ferent state (or the same state) which is the actual state. We may call the voli-
tive aspect of management its ability to envision a future state as different from
the actual state and to undertake measures that reduce or enlarge the actual
state to the future state.
For sake of simplicity, let environment here be a catch-all term denoting mater-
ial, social, and temporal dimensions. Of course, since »the environment con-
tains no information«, yet »is at it is« (von Foerster 1981, 263), all of these
dimensions are »enacted« (Weick 1979) by the system itself. Environment thus
is a historical category relating to ecological surprises and technological lock-
in as well as to social conflict and coalition or to a traditionalized past and
unknown future. It describes the knowledge entertained by a system (or its
observer) with respect to the conditions of its reproduction, and the ignorance
that knowledge is embedded in and getting glimpses of.
We may model the distinction between the cognitive aspect of management,
on one hand, and the volitive aspect of management, on the other, by two dif-
ferent exchange relations. The first one is a relation between states as seen by
an observer, the second one a relation between states in the environment as
produced by the observer. Gotthard Günther (1979, 215) gives the following
figures for the two cases, fig. 1 for cognition and fig. 2 for volition, the smaller
box denoting the observer watching (fig. 1) and acting on (fig. 2) his environ-
ment:

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

There is an inverse relationship between the two mechanisms of exchanging

states for each other, and a constant interplay between them.
More importantly, however, both cognition and volition work by exchange and
thus by a distinction not only between one state and the other, but also
between a place and its occupation. Each state may assume a value, which is
contingent upon its own exchange relation. As one may exchange one thought
for another when trying to figure out which one gives a consistent image of a
world, one may as easily envision the exchange of one state of the world for
another in order to let it fit one’s image of it. The action entailed by that vision
might not be undertaken that easily but this only informs the volitive opera-
tion of exchange, it does not block it. Changing thoughts or states introduces,
even if almost unnoticeable, a moment at which the place occupied just before
by a thought or a value, is empty.
300 Dirk Baecker

Cognition works by emptying and re-marking one’s own thinking, as volition

works by emptying and re-marking the states of the world. Both operations
are done in close neighborhood to different thoughts and different states, such
that there is only relative emptiness, that is an emptiness as distinguished
from something. Else, there could not be any distinction operating.
Note that there is a certain artificiality in the distinction between cognition
and volition. One may assume an observer changing his or her own thinking
as somebody volitively changing his or her cognition, perhaps by doing »the-
ory«. And one may assume the states of the world being exchanged as opera-
tions obeying the attempt of the world to better see itself (Spencer Brown
1969, 105), doing a kind of »theory« inherent in all practice.
Anyhow, purpose is just another word for void. When looking at the environ-
ment of the present state, one is looking at the unmarked, which is the source
of possible disturbance. When looking at the future state of the present state,
one is looking at an unmarked state awaiting its mark. Any purposeful man-
agement, and there is no other one, either knows about the void surrounding
any purpose or introduces it in order to further the purpose. There is no other
way to realize what is not yet real.
Purpose, being the marked state of a form consisting of the purpose and its
void, is the mechanism to deal in evolution. The purpose is the selection of
possible variation and defines, when being changed, a variation of its own. The
establishment of the form of the purpose defines retention. One may call it
strategy, hierarchy, or game (Crozier / Friedberg 1977).

V. The Model

The Russian revolution is a case in point. Philip Selznick, in his book on »The
Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics« (Selznick
1952), was able to show that the main mechanism of that revolution was
Lenin’s and others’ concept of »dual power«. It worked by changing all kinds
of existing parties, institutions, and corporations into the »empty shells« of a
power not existing any more, and by replacing at the right moment the empty
shell by a parallel structure of power build up in preparation and consisting of
loyal Bolshevik Communists.
The vision, or purpose, is simple.Yet its execution is not. That is why Leninism
is an apt model of management. We analyze the procedure step by step. And
we use, in order to simplify and to visualize the complexity of the procedure,
Spencer Brown’s (1969) calculus of indications as a means of notation.
It should be understood that we compute the revolution in retrospect. We do
not assume that our model is a possible model of how to manage revolutions
in general (Hamel 2000). We are interested in the specific case even if the spe-
Lenin’s Void: Towards a Kenogrammar of Management 301

cific case is a general one on its more abstract level. The more expanded the
form, the less general the model. Condense it, and you understand something
about management in general. Note, however, that each specific cross is iden-
tical to the most general model, thus revealing the fractal nature of the proce-
dure.
All management is performance of a purpose, setting it, looking at inside and
outside and maintaining the distinction:

= purpose

Let such a form denote a marked state, »purpose«, in distinction from an

unmarked state, the void. Crossing the distinction from the void to the pur-
pose produces it. That is why there is a void on the left side of the equation as
well. We are dealing with the form of compensation (Spencer Brown 1969, 10).
The distinction and indication of a purpose compensates for the void existing
there if no purpose would be distinguished and indicated.
In order to show that management knows what it is doing, we may write the
form:

management = purpose environment

This may be understood as the basic »cybernetic« form if cybernetics is under-

stood as a general theory of control and communication (Wiener 1948). Note
that the environment is part of the marked state, thus distinguishing it from an
unmarked state as the outside of the form of the purpose. We deal with
»enacted« environments.
The step leaving the general case and leading into an analysis of Bolshevik
revolution as designed by Lenin and others (Lenin 1902) consists in defining
the purpose in terms of a specified environment. Lenin defines the conquering
of positions in existing organizations such as party journals, parties, organiza-
tions of the labor movement, governments, armies, and corporations as the
purpose of the strategy leading to the revolution and of the revolution itself.
The management advantage of such a definition is that it applies to the pur-
pose as well as to the environment. We now have distinctions »re-entered«
(Spencer Brown 1969, 56) into the form of the distinction:

managementBol. = positions organizations positions organizations

The management of the Bolshevik revolution consists in doubling all existing

organizations and the positions offered by them depending on the distinction
whether they are occupied by a loyal communist or not. If not, they are to be
302 Dirk Baecker

conquered, infiltrated, or neutralized, depending on the means at hand. That

maximum notion is then reduced with respect to the strategically interesting
organizations and positions, to the resources available, and to organizations
susceptible to such an avail.
All positions in organizations of interest for the Bolshevik revolution are,
because they are occupied by either the »imperialists« or the competing
»social revolutionaries«, to be defined as empty, that is, as not yet occupied by
a loyal Communist.
Lenin knew that competition is more dangerous than opposition. Opposition
strengthens through helping in focusing behavior, whereas competition com-
petes for similar, and scarce, resources. That is why the strategy preparing the
revolution singles out positions and organizations occupied by competing
social revolutionaries, whereas the strategy realizing the revolution, without
loosing sight of competitors, applies to organizations and positions held by
Tsarists and Imperialists.
The strategy is aptly called »strategy of access« (Selznick 1952, 113ss.). The tac-
tics follow from that. They are an expansion of that form specifying just how
the positions are to be conquered. The most important means is the use of
party »agents« instead of party »members« in the traditional sense. That is
why Lenin had invented the party as his interpretation of the third of Marx’s
»three messages« (Lenin 1913; Baecker 2002b). Party agents are susceptible to
management; party members are not. Lenin shows that Communist people
may replace the people occupying the positions of relevant organizations if
and only if Communists understand themselves as agents of the revolution.
That is what defines Bolshevism:

managementBol. = agents people organizations people positions organizations

We may note how the purpose as it is expanded becomes an image of the

structure to be changed and realized.
And we may note that such a management is its own evolutionary algorithm
since all positions emptied define the variation triggering the respective selec-
tions, as is the general mechanism of mobility inside organizations (White
1970). Creating a void defines actions to be undertaken. The actions spell out
the kenogrammar introduced by calculating voids. The proper retention mea-
sures are self-evident as well since all depend on maintaining the form, that is
on defining and redefining organizations to be conquered even if that, as the
revolution proceeds, covers the whole world society. The idea of a Communist
International comes in handy.
We may finally note that the most operative core of that form, the lowest level,
so to speak, defines a form:
Lenin’s Void: Towards a Kenogrammar of Management 303

party organization = agents people

which equals the most basic form of the revolution as it is considered in Bol-
shevik terms. Party organizations consists in transforming people into agents
as one sees fit. That is why people is redefined in terms of peasants, soldiers,
workers, and sailors (Trotzki 1924). And that is why the distinction is main-
tained nevertheless since it is only when agents distinguish themselves from
people that they can maintain their identity as agents (Selznick 1952, 36):
Agents are supplied with the appropriate »theory« cherishing their sense of
righteousness. They are supplied with a pure morale different from the corrupt
one of Capitalists and Tsarists, thus legitimizing most kinds of betrayal of peo-
ple outside the party. They are kept occupied by plenty of minor tasks in order
to keep their memory of the revolution to come or to secure fresh and alive.
And there is always an element of conspiracy in their activities to be sure that
an appropriate distance towards everybody else (including oneself) is main-
tained.
The revolution itself then reads:

revolution = agents people terror

The operation, on the level of its management, is defined by agents being con-
sidered as the humans fighting for the humanized society of the future. Their
social position is defined by the organizations they are working for.
»Terror«, as it were, adds to the R-factors of communication identified in
Baecker (2002b) networking them into an overall identity of communication,
eased by »accounting and control« (Lenin 1917). The only way to loosen the
grip of terror on both people and agents consists in introducing and maintain-
ing different publics offering the possibility to switch between different kinds
of behavior nested within these publics (Goffman 1959; White 1995). Every-
body seemed to know, already in the 1920s, that this is the reason why only
marriage was able to compete with, and eventually defeat, communism (Groys
2002, 53). Marriage consists in offering and maintaining a public for both indi-
viduals involved that brings forth demands inconsistent with the publics of a
society organized the socialist way.

VI. Conclusion

This paper delivers only the sketch of a kenogrammar of management. The

exploration of such a kenogrammar would use all kinds of exchange and order
relations in order to show how forms are used to indicate unmarked states
304 Dirk Baecker

that are transformed by purpose into marked states (Günther / von Foerster
1973; Baecker 1999). The structure of performance in any case seems to rely on
both cognition and volition able to compute well-marked empty places.
Indeed, it is by indicating these empty places that feedback systems are gain-
ing their operative control. Feedforward, then, introduces the further opera-
tion of emptying occupied places. This is what any management needs. And it
defines the structure asked for by sociology to be able to watch what manage-
ment is doing and how it is doing it.

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Social and Behavioral Sciences. Social Research 62, 1035-1063.

Prof. Dr. Dirk Baecker

Fakultät für das Studium fundamentale, Universität Witten / Herdecke
Alfred-Herrhausen-Str. 50, D-58448 Witten
dbaecker@uni-wh.de
www.uni-wh.de/baecker